thenameisPoGo

Doesn't it feel good to receive a message from a long lost friend when you are in the middle of a horrible day? One simple message that reads 'just checking in on you'.  Things didn't go well, you have been trying to make it through a tough week. The situation is worsening day by day. You are not in a position to convey this to your near and dear ones. The pressure is accumulating. You are on the verge of blowing up like a volcano. You are trying so hard, so very hard to keep it together.  Every single time you try, you are failing at it miserably. You want to bury yourself under a blanket and you keep wishing none of it was true. You hope that you will wake up and things will go back to being normal again. You wake up, only to realise the chaos is growing bigger.  It feels like you are carrying this heavy weight on your shoulders. The pain is travelling down your spine as you try and walk. Your body is warmer than usual because you are under stress. You are unable to t...

I have a backlog of  5 blogs including this one.  But the point is I made it to this one! When I took this challenge up of blogging across the month, the content came to me quite easily. This is the BlogChatterA2Z challenge, where I post one blog each every day for the month of April.  I need to write on all days except Sundays, and it starts with the Titles of the blog going forth alphabetically. This is my first attempt at the challenge. I have written a few Facebook & Instagram posts in the past, but never put my mind to exercise this way.  I thought I had it all and would nail this challenge until reality came crashing down on me. I had a plan, at least not a detailed one, but a fairly good one about what I was going to write every day. I would update that list of titles almost on a daily basis when I came across something new that amused me. I had spoken to friends and bothered the shit out of my husband discussing my blogs all day long. Call me crazy! I wou...

I am aware we are in the new age of feminism and our (women) voices are heard louder than before. I understand feminism stems from years of oppression and bias that we as women have been subjected to. If I had to sugar-coat oppression, I’d call it patriarchy. But let us for the sake of this blog step out of those shoes and try and look at things from the other side.  I have for long been the person to be very careful not to make generalizing statements. Call me diplomatic, but I have faced the backlash for generalizing things. I haven’t perfected this yet, I will learn as I go. Not every individual is the same.            And now, not every male.  Here I would like to bring your attention to just the idea of marriages. I speak for myself, where I have met a lot of prospects for a husband. 8 out of 10 times, irrespective of whether my parents chose the boy or I did, the reasons for rejecting have been where either of the parties is objectified. I a...

We have all seen the Snickers' commercial where former Indian team Captain MS Dhoni known for his cool, loses it because he is hungry. Well, I am no MS Dhoni, but I can turn from being awesome to awful in seconds of my hunger pangs kicking in. I can have discussions about food for hours together and not be bored. I am the kind of person who can be full to the brim but can always manage to squeeze in a little yum yum if required.  My connection with food dates back to the days of my childhood. Maa, who for very long in her life didn't know how to cook, learnt it from the best after getting married, Appa. I have vivid memories of sitting on the granite slab of the kitchen counter and narrating my entire day at school to Maa while she cooked. Every now and then, she would give me easy tasks of the prep that would go on for dinner. I would be ecstatic that she let me do something.  Gradually I was promoted from assistant to her sous chef.    On days where I lucked out, s...

Have you ever had one of those days when everything had to be just right but things ran in the exact opposite direction? If you relate with me, read. We are all profane when the time deserves it, and this episode definitely did. I had been working relentlessly on a presentation for a month. With one more day to go, I was still at work at 10:00 p.m. I was confident nothing could possibly go wrong. I had run through every little detail. I had double-checked all the figures and statistics. The infographics were looking good. I had backed up the file in two different formats. My boss had skimmed through the presentation just before he could leave office. He had asked me to change a few details based on the latest update he had received. While I sat in my chair looking at the result of efforts, sweat and blood put into my presentation, for the first time in an entire month I was confident this would go well. I had rehearsed through the list of FAQ. I was beyond confident of my promotion pos...

I was in the eighth grade. In the same year, my cousin was getting married. Appa had decided to design a lehenga from a simple Ilkal saree for the occasion. He deconstructed the saree and put together a design and had it sewed by the tailor. He was known for a lot of tricks up his sleeve, and creating magic was one of them. The lehenga managed to set a trend at least in the closed circles. I fell in love with the idea of a saree here. For my graduation ceremony in my twelfth grade, he bought me my first silk bandhani saree in a lovely combination of cerulean and cobalt blue. 💙 This was complemented with raw silk, deep blue blouse.  Teenage is confusing and there's an innate pressure to look good and feel beautiful. Draping this saree, I felt beautiful. It takes a lot to convince yourself at that age, one can thank emotions overpowering rationality,- YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL . Even the best of the best, fail at this.  I fell in love with the idea of a saree again. You know the reaso...

If Cinnamon, Clove, Cardamom, and Nutmeg can all come under one category - Spices, then I for sure can see how my family is all under one roof. Even though there is a certain system of classification as spices, they each have their own distinctive aroma and taste. But put together in a biryani, you end up with one aromatic gorgeous-looking result. I'd like to introduce you to my family, and the acceptance we have developed and are still developing towards the myriad traditions followed by each of our cultures. My Dad was born and raised in Bangalore, his surname didn't have a Gowda, but I do. Let me assure you, we are not the Gowdas to have a label up their car which reads "Gowda's". But we sure are the kind that indulge in a non-vegetarian feast without an occasion. My Mom on the other hand, is a Reddy who connects with her roots to a place in Prakasham district in Andhra Pradesh. A culmination of both the cultures from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh has mostly bee...

  “Captain Planet, he’s the hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero…”, if you know the lyrics further, you are a treasure on the face of this earth. Well, of all the five characters that would combine their powers together, of Earth, Fire, Water, Wind and Heart, I’ve always wanted to be the planeteer who had the power of Heart - Ma-ti, and for very long I thought it was spelt Mutty. We learn as we go.  As far as my memory serves me right, I used to rush back home from school to be able to watch the episodes of SwatKats and Captain Planet, because they were telecasted around 04:00 p.m. My brother and I would build our own bund wall, and equip ourselves with anything that seemed like a weapon and go bonkers shooting in the air at an imaginary bad guy. All of this happened while we watched Swatkats, pretending to be one of them. We would have our internal fights about which one of us was the cooler Kat.  The next one that will always be my most favourite, will be the Powerpu...

An insight on Periods and Pain. Period. Disclaimer: Not for the ones whose thoughts are narrower than the roads of Bangalore.  If you're not too comfortable discussing periods, then it's about time you are. :)  One of the days, when I was just about to leave for work, is when I had this sudden stinging pain in my lower abdomen. Quickly, I checked my phone for the date. And then came crashing down my agenda for the day. It was “THAT TIME OF THE MONTH”, as many of you would refer to it. How comfortable are we as women, at a time when the world is progressing rapidly, to talk about a natural process that occurs in a woman’s body? Continue reading, this gets fun.  As I write this, a male friend of mine asked me what I was writing about. To no surprise, he left the room listening to what I had to say. That’s how uncomfortable it is to even mention the word "periods". I don’t want to stress on the acceptance of the process, there are already a number of people ...

I am writing this to be able to reach out to others who have or are experiencing the loss of a dear one. Mind you, I am no shrink, but what I write further has just been one of the many ways of getting through with the pain of having lost my Appa. It’s been seven months since I last saw him. The main reason I took to writing was to have a one-sided conversation with him as I wrote. I felt jotting down every little emotion I was experiencing was one way to stay connected with him. I resorted to the easiest way possible, to put my thoughts down as Notes on my phone, and every now and then I’d have a post going up, mostly to reach out to those who miss him as much as I do.  Be it sad that he’s not around anymore, or happy looking at all the good times we had together, or confused and lost because he wasn’t around to guide me, or just going weak failing to accept his absence, it has been quite the turmoil. The frequency of experiencing these emotions lessened as time passed by. But th...